Representatives of the
non-Orthodox Jewish movements in Israel have complained to the tourism minister
and the minister of public diplomacy and diaspora affairs against Israel's
hotels, which they claim are systematically discriminating against tourist
groups from abroad by not allowing them to hold prayer services according to
their customs.

Executive Director and
CEO of the Masorti Movement Yizhar Hess said: "There is no connection
between the rules of kashruth and their enforcement in the kitchen and the
activities in other departments of the hotel...”

When the next
school year begins in September, a third stream of state-approved schools will
join the existing secular (mamlachti) and religious (mamlachti dati)
school systems that have defined Israeli education since the founding of the
state.

According
to Rabbi Michael Melchior, founder of Meitarim, the Network for Jewish
Democratic Education, Knesset approval in February to implement a comprehensive
State Pluralistic Education System will encourage students from both observant
and secular backgrounds to study together, with a curriculum based on Jewish
values of tolerance, Jewish peoplehood and humanism.

But religious soldiers
and their rabbis also have an obligation. They should do their best to find
leniencies in Halacha where possible so that secular soldiers are not forced to
endure unnecessary burdens.

Whether the issue is
gender segregation, threats to refuse military orders to evacuate a settlement,
or adherence to Shabbat, religious soldiers and their rabbis should embrace
moderation, not religious extremism.

The human
resources division of the IDF reported last week that they were forced not to
draft 100 ultra-orthodox men that would have enlisted due to cutbacks in
per-soldier finances from the treasury.

Asked why
the Treasury cut down on the financing, the officer said: “The cost of a haredi
soldier is very high, we have to pay him for family costs, special training
(without women), special food, Torah lessons – all these things cost money.

We
get 5400NIS per month per soldier from the treasury, and they needed to
cut down to make the budget for 2011.”

Several prominent
national-religious rabbis have expressed support for Lt.-Col. Shalom Eisner,
the officer who was filmed striking a pro-Palestinian activist in the face with
his M-16 rifle.

Former IDF chief rabbi
Avihai Rontzki has also weighed in on the incident, and slammed what he labeled
“an instinctive and impulsive” reaction against an officer who has “given his
life everyday for the sake of the Jewish nation.”

Dr. Meir Wikler is a
Brooklyn based psychotherapist, author and lecturer.

When Yad
Vashem in Jerusalem opened its new wing, known as The Holocaust History Museum,
in 2005, it was much ballyhooed as a state of the art, multi-million dollar
Holocaust museum to top all others.

While
praise for the new museum wing has poured forth from dignitaries and laymen,
the unified opposition of so-called ultra-orthodox, or Haredi Jewry, has stuck
out like a sore thumb. Why have Haredim been so upset?

How simplistic and
shallow it is to define “religious” and “secular” based on superficial,
irrelevant criteria.

We got so used to the stereotype whereby anyone who has a
beard and sidelocks is automatically religious, not to mention a rabbi, while the
guy with the ponytail or earring is automatically classified as a secular.

The Jerusalem District
Court postponed Monday morning the evidentiary stage in the trial of Rabbi
Motti Elon for alleged indecent acts, in order to allow the defense team time
to review the new material and to present its response to the state attorney’s
office.

Jerusalem District
prosecutors requested last week to add four new witnesses to the case to
testify about the rabbi’s custom of hugging his students, as well as the
testimony of a social worker who says she saw one such event.

Rabbi Dr. Haviva
Ner-David is a rabbi, teacher, and writer living on Kibbutz Hannaton in the
Lower Galilee in Israel.

In Israel,
mikvaot (ritual baths) are generally run by the Israeli Rabbinate, which
does not recognize non-Orthodox conversions and therefore does not even allow
such conversions to take place in their state mikvaot.

… I had a
dream of turning the Hannaton mikveh into a pluralist mikveh
where anyone (man or woman, gay or straight, single or married, Orthodox or
religiously liberal, Jew or non-Jew) who wants to immerse could do so, and
where the terms and conditions of the immersion would be up to the one who is
immersing.

The zionism I advocate, however, the zionism with a small
"z," has modest aspirations, not messianic pretensions. My
strong, even passionate, allegiance to a weak zionism, a liberal zionism, even
an American-style zionism, aspires to cultivate a neutral public sphere,
paralleling that of the American context.

But like its counterpart, the Israeli public sphere, though
putatively "neutral," would continue to be shaped by the history, culture
and traditions—even the symbols, and especially the calendar—of the majority
Jewish culture.

This is a zionism confident in an inclusive and diverse
public sphere, one which will cultivate a growing separation between religion
and State as a place for exchange, not coercion.

But if Yehoshua’s argument hinges on the second approach—that
living in Israel enables certain possibilities for Judaism that are not
possible without sovereignty—then he may actually be right. But he is only half
right.

The chairman of the Second Television and Radio
Authority Tuesday rejected criticism of a vote by the authority's council to
reduce the number of hours that women are on the air on ultra-Orthodox radio
station Kol Barama.

According to the decision made two weeks ago,
every week the station will have women on the air for four hours, rather than
the six hours of a previous agreement.

[The
authority's chairman, Ilan Avishar] added that "the gaps are not that
great. To raise such a hue and a cry over four hours instead of six, when those
four hours are significant in terms of women's presence, seems petty to
me."

Lawyers
representing the CEO of the website, “Behadrei Haredim,” accused the police of
starting an investigation and filing charges as a result of the website’s
attacks against Jerusalem district police commander, Nisso Shaham, and his
predecessor, Aryeh Amit.

The
lawyers claim that recent police actions are in response to pictures posted of
Shaham wearing an SS uniform.

As it turns out, this
platform was nothing but a cheap British tabloid in its haredi version. A
platform contingent on "pay and you'll be protected – don't pay and you
can bid farewell to your public life as you know it."

...So Hadrei Haredim,
as it seems, was unable to free itself from the tribal behavior patterns of the
haredi sector after all. Unfortunately for those who were extorted, they
belonged to the opposite camp, and therefore were regarded as fair game. The
"protection money" and "exemptions" made it all criminal.

On Sunday, police
announced that they suspected the charity of cheating donors out of the funds
after making them believe the money would be used for purchasing food for the
needy, when in fact the money was used to purchase food that was sold to buyers
in the haredi community.

With some 10,000
couples marrying every year the world of haredi matchmaking has become a major
industry.

According to the
Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) there are 135,000 households that see
themselves as part of the haredi sector, and with an average of six members in
each haredi family, roughly one million people belong to the haredi sector in
society.

This means that nearly
every haredi family has a family member undergoing the matchmaking process at
any given time.

Mimouna has become a major event on the Israeli
calendar. At one time drawing only a few hundred participants, today a central
celebration in Jerusalem’s Sacher Park draws about 100,000 people, usually
including the president and prime minister.

Across the country, Moroccans and Israelis of all
ethnic backgrounds flock to smaller public and private celebrations.

A special
law even requires bosses to grant employees unpaid leave on the day of Mimouna
if they want to carry on celebrations from the previous evening.

"Final Resting Place," a
joint venture by the Health Ministry and the Abu
Kabir Forensic Institute, which aims to entomb 8,288 organs and tissue samples
removed from deceased during autopsies, was officially launched on Sunday.

Yehuda Meshi-Zahav,
who heads ZAKA (Disaster Victim Identification) also voiced his objection to
the project, saying that Judaism mandates that each and every part of a
deceased's remains, no matter how minute, be buried.

However, Rabbi Yaakov
Rosa, who works with the Forensic Institute, said several rabbis have endorsed
the project.

One of the Abuhatzeira family rabbis owes the
government NIS 9.5 million in taxes, according to the Israel Tax Authority.

The authority claims that Rabbi Yekutiel
Abuhatzeira, a descendent of a distinguished rabbinic dynasty and a son of the
Baba Sali, did not pay taxes on religious services he provided between 2003 and
2009.

According to the IRS,
the rabbi owes NIS 10 million in back taxes. Authorities uncovered the debt as
part of an ongoing investigation into several prominent rabbis and spiritual
leader, for alleged tax evasion.